"Paris that no longer exists. The Palace of Andrzej Mniszch" is the title of an exhibition of photographs from the family archives of Alexander Demblin, PhD edited by Professor Tomasz de Rosset, to which the director of the University Library in Toruń, Krzysztof Nierzwicki, PhD and the dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts at the Nicolus Copernicus University in Toruń, Professor Filip Pręgowski invite us. The opening will take place on 28 November at 1.30 pm in the University Library (2nd floor). The exhibition will be available until 31 December 2024. 

The photographs on display, taken by Michel Bertaud, a well-known Parisian photographic and editorial atelier, were probably taken between 1881 and 1884 and depict the palace, which no longer exists, its successive interiors filled with outstanding works of art and its painting atelier.  This is an exceptional source for the history of collecting, display and visual culture, as well as an extremely valuable testimony to the spiritual life of Polish emigration in France. 

There is no number 16 on rue Daru in the 8th arrondissement of Paris. Once upon a time, on the corresponding property, there was a hôtel particulier of the Polish Count Andrzej Mniszch in an extensive garden. At the beginning of the 20th century, it was demolished as the rue Daru, formerly semi-rural, was transformed into a typical big city street; not even the address has survived, and a modern building marked 14a now rises on the site of property number 16. Mniszech, a talented artist-painter and art amateur, was one of our most prominent collectors. After the middle of the 19th century, during the Crimean War (1854-1856), he settled in Paris with his wife and several-year-old son, where he took French citizenship and remained permanently.

At the beginning of the 1860s, the above-mentioned palace-villa was built for him according to a design by Clement Parent, and was soon filled with a gradually building rich artistic collection. This was primarily a large and very interesting collection of paintings, mostly by Dutch masters of the 17th century, such as portraitists Frans Hals and Bartolomeus van der Helst, Rembrandt's pupils Jacob de Backer and Govaert Flinck, landscape painter Jan van Goyen, still-life painter Abraham van Beyeren and French Baroque and Rococo artists such as Philippe de Champaigne, Nicolas de Largillière, Hyacinthe Rigaud, Jean Pillement, Joseph Vernet, Léopold Boilly. 

Chinese porcelain and Japanese woodcuts were also an important part of the collection, as well as antique furniture, European ceramics, prints, drawings and a substantial professional library. This entire assemblage of artworks sold at auction after 1900 became a legend of the Paris art market.

Prof. Tomasz De Rosset, PhD, is a researcher at the Department of Antiquities and Museum Studies at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Nicolaus Copernicus University. His research interests include art history, museology and collecting in historical and contemporary terms, art collections and art collections and painting.

 

You are cordially invited!